I'd expect McCain to be somewhere around 25-30%. CNN's crappy poll release does not include crosstabs. Which is lame. Why the heck do these organizations hold back crosstabs? Do they really think anyone is going to subscribe and pay for their stupid crosstabs???

New Mexico and Iowa are off the table then. That means that Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia are all sufficient to win for Obama. Nevada takes it to 269, where he probably wins in the House. If he can sneak Montana or North Dakota, Nevada would win it, and if he sneaks both, they'll win it too.

Iowa and NM have been off the table for awhile. Unfortunately for Dems, this leaves Obama 6 votes short of 270. I honestly don't think McCain can really expect to do better than 273, because I just don't see him picking off MI or NH (PA seems out of reach as well, but has for awhile). This must have the McCain camp very worried. They seem to be playing offense, but they are really playing massive defense right now!

Right. But you stillcould be seeing the expected bounce we've all been waiting for. None of it will mean much for the next weekor so until both sides get there bounce...let them do there convention thing, get there bounces and let's see what we have in a couple weeks so we can start seeing how close the race really is.

I've wondered that myself. All the cross-tabs that I have seen on the state seem to confirm this thouugh. For instance the state is more in favor of ending the Iraq war quickly.

It may be a combination of factors such as their popular Democratic governor running for President, well publicized collusion from the Republicans to force political incitements before the last election, a contested Democratic primary, and broad movement among Hispanics to favoring Democrats this cycle.

I think that New Mexico is pretty much in the bag though as almost everyone has confirmed this.

I would also point out Nevada. The polling of that state has been dominated by Rasmussen, and their results have been counter intuitive to date. This is closer to where I though the race might be.

I don't however feel that showing high numbers of third-party preferences is good for confidence in this set of polls. There is no major third-party movement this cycle, and they won't likely net more than 2% to 3% in total come election day. As in past elections, I would guess that at least 2/3 of the Nader people will end up voting for the Democratic nominee. Barr's lower numbers suggests less Republican pickups from these polling results will be had.

So basically Obama is pretty close to netting a win, Michigan and Hew Hampshire appear to be the only vulnerable blue states, on the other hand a lot of red states are in play, enough that Obama has a good shot.

No wonder the Obama camp has been so unconcerned about the national polls

Wow, this polling data is something else. If Obama gets Nevada and Colorado it's lights out for McCain. I think the Richardson and Rendell Demo Machines in NM and PA will get the vote out for Obama. Repubs haven't been doing well in either of those states.

I agree. The 269-269 is looking more plausible all the time. That's when the McCain camp must hit Nebraska hard so the state doesn't send one of its EVs to Obama (or one of Maine's to McCain, for that matter)

Looking at the crosstabs, the voters in these polls seem both relatively old and independent, at least compared to the 2004 exit poll. Perhaps the high number of independents explains Nadar's high level of support?

Due to the House deciding an EV tie, and due to the fact that Democrats have state-by-state majorities in the House, any EV tie goes to Obama in effect. So Obama only needs 269 EV's to win, and McCain needs 270.

Those are bizarrely high numbers for Nader, Barr, and -- McKinney??!!?
Did they rotate the candidates names so that McKinney was sometimes the first one named, or what? And does anyone think Nader is really going to get 8% anywhere this year, even in San Francisco?

Opps, looking at the crosstabs again the sample size of the subgroups indicated a relatively old and independent voter pool, but the overall poll numbers have been in some way been weighted, although what demographics and to what extent I am not sure.

These are all registered voters. Its strange how McCain has picked up in every state that it shows with the exception of Col which has stayed the same. CNN probably polled it this way for a devious reason.

A 269-269 would just be bad. We'd have the same divisions we had after 2000. Whichever guy wins he needs to doit with a majority. No matter who wins he will be president of a country where basically half the people don't like him....a tie i nthe vote would just be bad.

While a 1-point lead for McCain in CO is consistent with a number of other recent polls of this state, this poll's crosstabs are curious. Why do they report the percentage of respondents in the 18-34 age range (Obama's strongest range) as "N/A"? And does anyone believe that McCain will win 96% of Republicans? Bush--as an incumbent--only won 93% of CO Republicans in 2004. See:http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004//pages/results/states/CO/P/00/epolls.0.html

If McCain has to win 96% of Republicans to have a 1% lead, then this state is very likely to flip. Also, this poll has Denver going for Obama 61% to 33%; Kerry beat Bush in Denver 70% to 29%. It's clear from the many recent polls of CO that Obama is running ahead of Kerry in this state.

I had the same thought at first, but then I remembered the Hillary factor. Those McCain/Nader voters are likely angry liberals who don't want to vote for Obama, but won't vote for McCain either given a choice.

These are RV polls. No filter. I take these with a few grains of salt. However I am grateful to CNN for throwing a wet towel over all the PUMA-Rep fever we saw yesterday. They really seem to be P.O.ed by these results. It warms the cockles of my heart.

Recent Nevada polls have been all over the place. Still, the 3 most recent polls of this state all have Obama ahead there. Kerry only lost this state by 3%--about 22,000 votes. At the time, Republicans out-numbered Democrats in NV by 1%. Today, NV Democrats out-number NV Republicans by 5%--or 55,560. See:http://mysilverstate.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=699

Also, Barr is likely to receive more votes than Nader in NV--the state has a strong Libertarian streak.

ca-indp: What do you base your guess on? From what I've read (and granted I don't know how accurate these numbers are), the Dem nominee in the past few elections has received about 90% support from identified Dems. And for the 1950s-about 1988 it was lower, at around or just under 80%. So if Obama gets under 70% that would certainly be a huge shift from the historical trend.

Yes, we should take these polls with a grain of salt but Dems (and any fair, decent-minded Independents/Repubs) should take heart: current polls just don't account for the ground-game advantage Obama has or the huge numbers of new voters, a majority of which are younger than 35 and pro-Obama. Also, the undecideds are not necessarily anti-Obama they're just waiting to fully "get" who Obama is as a person. No such thing for McCain who is a well-known commodity in American politics. But can you blame Dems for their eternal pessimism? Somehow we always manage to lose a sure bet.

No polls suggest that Obama will win in the 70s. Most national polls have him winning high 70s (i.e. 78, 79), and there are about 10% of voters undecided. it's unlikely that NO undecided Democrats will vote for him..

Stating opinion as fact is getting extremely obnoxious on this site. Just because you THINK Obama won't win Dems for whatever reason (based obviously on nothing), doesn't mean it won't happen.

This PA poll is consistent with every other poll of this state taken in August--all of them have had Obama up by about 5 points there. If there is one state where Biden may help Obama (besides DE), then it is PA--he and his wife were born there, and he has been called the state's "third senator."

McCain may need Tom Ridge as his running mate to flip PA. Ridge's pro-choice views, however, would depress conservative evangelical turnout in the swing states of IA, CO, NM, VA, NC, GA, IN, and MO. The first four of these states would likely swing toward Obama, and the net gain for Obama (assuming Ridge delivers PA for McCain) would be 14 electoral votes. He would then need to win only 1 of the other 4 states to win the election (assuming he carries the other Kerry states). Or, Obama could win by taking AK or NV or MT or ND or OH or FL.

I noticed Mohammed Ali asked to be at the convention to see Obama, and I think Ali deserves a shoutout for providing Obama with a powerful strategy: the rope-a-dope.

While Obama was in Europe and Hawaii, McCain squeezed out a small uptick in the polls and solidified the base that would have been his eventually anyway. At the same time he made himself look as desperate as Hillary was in the later days of her primary campaign. He may have clawed himself closer to Obama, but clawing can be tiring.

@basil:
First sign of defeat is understimate your enemy. Deny the reality. Obamabots like u have started doing it. Sign of desperation: that you can't believe in a year Reps are expected to be wiped out (thanks to GWB etc.), your guy Obama has been tied up with McCain. He should have been up by 10% in most battleground states. Don't u find that itslef is telling you that voters are not buying Obama's BS.
Deny reality and LOSE in Nov.

All of this noise over Hillary voters not coming home is a bunch of hullabalou. I voted for Hillary in the primary, and after she lost I went through the 12 stages of grieving. Now, I will do the right thing and vote for Obama. As a woman and doctor, how could I possibly vote for someone who is against abortion even in the case of rape and incest, thus putting the lives of women at risk? I suspect most Hillary voters will come to the same conclusion after the convention. At any rate, all of this pandering from McCain to former Hillary voters only strengthens my resolve to vote for Obama.

@DocnTN: You'd be surprised. A lot of PA democrats who ended up supporting Hillary supporters voted for Bob Casey (who spoke at the convention yesterday) and is actually more anti-abortion than McCain.

I've heard better speeches from Bill Clinton. When he did mention Obama, it was forced. The camera spotlighted several Afro-Americans with frowns on their faces during the speech. One gets the impression that he and Barack Obama don't like each other one bit.

As of the July report from their Secretary of State's office active registration figures statewide are as follows:
Democrats - 737,565
Republicans - 795,949
Unaffiliated - 681,639
along with roughly 4,000 Greens and 6,500 Libertarians

The S.O.S. there changed the way the report was formatted several times over the course of the year so I wish I had a longer timeline to look at the change in registration over but it was only easy to make an apples to apples comparison from June to July, a one month period. Over that time frame the Democrats added 19970 voters to the rolls and the Republicans added 9847 for a net change of DEM + 10123 voters over that one month period.

@thoughtful:
How much money would you give for that speech? Do you realize that Clinton sometimes makes a half a million per speech? That wasn't one of them. He almost blew it at the end. I guess you hear what you want to hear.

@thoughtful:
Where did you see Rove at? He was on the O Reilly Show before the speech, but I didn't see him afterward. Anyway it doesn't matter what Clinton said. Barack Obama had just better hope that his teleprompter doesn't malfunction tomorrow night. He is lost without it.

An interesting poll of 12 Mountain West districts has been released today. 8 of the 12 districts are red, with 4 in McCain's home state of AZ, 1 in ID, 1 in WY, 1 in CO, 1 in MT, 2 in NV, and 2 in NM. The poll has McCain ahead of Obama in these districts--but by just four points, 45-41. He almost certainly has big leads in half of the districts--the 4 in AZ and the two in deep red ID and deep red WY, respectively. Obama is likely running very close--if not ahead--in the districts in CO, MT, NV, and NM.

Bigmike: Very very astute point. Althought I'm a bit more optimistic. I think that those in the middle are slightly more maleable than in 2004. So it's either going to be this week or the debates that break this wide open. We'll see how bad McCain f*cks it up next week.

Heh....well you know I am a staunch conservtive, not a republican...a conservative. I gotta tell ya, Bill had a great speech, I think he shored up the base tonight. I think Obama walks away from this with a 10+ point bounce. The Clinton's really helped him. Bill fed the dems exactly what they wanted to hear, repub are evil, dems are perfect, take hte country back...he did a great job. Also, as a conservative I gotta tell you, I may not vote now....I will not vote for Obama, but I may stay home. I think the repubs need a whippin to get back to there conservative roots. The party has moved way to far left as you can see from Bush with his out of control spending, growing the size of g'ment, etc.
The dems are in good shape now, no doubt about it. Unless McCain knocks my socks off with a wildcard VP that I like or just blows me away at the convention next week...I am staying home.
You lefties should live it up, this is your 1980...and your 1994. if Obama wins and the dems pick up as many seats we think they will in the senate, we will have unchecked liberalism, we will see if it works or lead to disaster.
But as a conservative, all I can look at now, is that I would not have had Reagan without Carter first.
Live it up, cus you guys definately have th eedge and the momentum.

I agree that losing PA would be almost impossible for Obama to overcome. He would then need to win OH or FL to off-set the loss, with IA and some combination of the Mountain West states giving him the EVs he needs to win.

@Thoughtful:
I'm not on anyone's payroll. I may not even vote this year. You can't get at the facts if you are just going to agree with everything that the politicians put out to the public. If you ride the bandwagon, you will never get the truth. I personally think that the democrats are a joke this election cycle. I think you could actually say that they are the great pretenders. They want the general public to think that they are concerned about their health care. Thats a bunch of bull. They have all kinds of big corporations lined up to get at the billions that it would cost us. Its all a shell game. You know the republicans are just as bad but at least they have the safety of this country at the forefront. They also care about America's core values like how the morals of our children are being corrupted by this mega media onslaught. The democrats invite this stuff with among other things their rah rah of tvs homosexual stars and their antics. The basic physical labor working every day Americans care about these things. They also like law and order; another thing that the democrats can't quite come to terms with. I haven't heard anything positive coming from the democrats. Its all been accusing someone of failures without admitting that they are half of the blame. I know you don't agree, and you certainly don't have to. Its my opinion and I am entitled to it.

@player
Concerning your comment about Obama needing a teleprompter, you are totally clueless. I just attended a Barack rally in Virginia last week and sat in the first row of the backdrop group behind him. He not only spoke eloquently without help of prompter or notes but also took many questions, some of which were pretty off the wall, and answered them all intelligently and effortlessly without ever resorting to glib slogans or canned stump stories like JM does.

I agree with some of what you say. Just realize the left is filled with a lot of anger and hate for the country as it exists today. They want to see it radically changed. A large part of the left truly feel this country is a racist bigoted hateful country who is bent on global domination economically ad militarily. The reason Reagan won two of the largest landslides ever was because he did the opposite, he talked about why hits country is great, why the people are good....where the left constantly tells us why its bad and horrible and how we are hated around the world. The left right now is getting stronger, they are offering an easier way than the right. The leftist liberal philosophy tells people it has no real expectation of them other than to live how the g'ment tells you to live and it will provide your basic material and living needs for you thru various g'ment programs and entitlements. The right requires personal responsibility and requires you to work so you can provide for your own needs. So by default the lefts approach is much easier. Take the work for welfare provision as a perfect example. A conservative will tell you ok, if they cannot find a job in the private sector and want a welfare check, that is fine, but if they are able bodied and healthy make them work for the city doing a variety of tasks, working at hospitals, libraries, etc. Where as the left says no, they have no real requirement to receive welfare other than you support them in the next election and they will keep your check coming. Again, its simply easier to not work and get paid, than to work and get paid. There are of course many who attempt to excel, work hard and get good jobs, but there are much ore who would rather be provided for, than to be the provider.
So at this point in our history, the left simply is getting stronger and growing because society as a whole is getting lazy and would rather be handed basic material and living needs, rather than work for them. The right recognizes this which is why the gop has moved so far left the last 8 years. Big g'ment spending for program after program.
Senator Clark once said” Liberalism is meeting the material needs of the masses thru a powerful centralized g’ment”. Liberalism requires a complete exchange of freedom for obedience. Liberals right now want to ban everything from the 100 watt light bulb to handguns. Taking away your personal freedom to choose, in exchange for g’ment compliance. 30 years go liberals warned us of the coming Ice Age which would destroy us all if we don’t give up our freedoms and become more uniform in our lives and restrict our use of the environment around us. Now they have moved on to global warming as the enemy, but the demand is still the same, give up your freedoms of choice on how you live, in exchange for g’ment compliance. Look at Imminent Domain, it was liberals on the supreme court who said the g’ment can take your land for the “common good”. The common good of course being defined by the g’ment. Slowly but surely our lives and freedoms are being eroded and given to the g’ment to make and run for us. In other word, to a liberal the g’ment is the only solution to our problems…however liberalism is fundamentally flawed and will eventually fail because all thru human history the desire for freedom and freedom of choice overwhelms the g’ment trying to control them. As it stands now, the only real freedom of choice the left believes in is aborting babies. About 32 million of them since 1975.
I've said to much, the lefties are gonna jump all over me now!

@dreamtimer:
It would. Everyone else has left the building except Gore. Kennedy, Hillary, Bill, Kerry are all gone. Gore is the last. Once he leaves, its will be Barack Obama and Howard Dean's party. It will totally be a left wing controlled democrat party. All those with a little conservatism in their blood have left with the exception of Bob Casey and Harold Ford Jr. I guess they will be elevated in the ranks.

@Stillow:
I agree with most of what you say. The ones controlling the party are elitists. They are billionaires or millionaires and they associate with the same.They have totally forgotten what it is like to be a poor person in this country. Most of them have never been poor. They have moved ever closer to becoming socialists. Karl Marx must be smiling from the grave. They fool the uneducated about wealth redistribution. This is the basis of belief in communist China and Vietnam. I got a bachelors in business finance so I know a little bit about how our economy and finances work. They back up their beliefs by throwing the names of the billionaire supporters around as proof. You know the ones that made their money from the real estate markets. I guess that this is all politics but these people take it further. Instead of giving Americans the guarantees of basic freedoms, they do what you said, promise them expensive entitlement programs that they have no way of paying for. They also jump at the suggestion that their image has been tarnished. They are media gun shy. They can't stand it because the world hates them. They are shamed to be an American when they travel abroad. Most common people don't travel abroad and they really don't care what the rest of the world thinks. I think the rest of the world was the reason that our country was started in the first place. I saw some write ups in the NYTimes about how wonderful the airports and facilities were in Beijing and how dumpy ours looked when they returned. They evidently stayed with the city and didn't go see how the poor lived. Also the smog in Beijing that was shown on TV was 10 times worse than LA. A documentary showed that the Chinese had shut down all of the thousands of coal burning factories for three months before the Olympics started just to get it as clean as 10 times worse than L.A. So much for the rest of the world. Its all smoke and mirrors.

Stillow:
As much of a liberal as I am, I do admire conservative principles. Liberal and conservative are two basic poles of political thought that can't exist without each other. And like you I don't see Bush and the neocons as conservatives. Unlike you, I don't see them as any sort of leftists, but rather as corporate fascist plutocrats.

Unfortunately for all of us, the neocons were not repudiated by the party they hijacked, and John McCain, despite his maverick image, played along for far, far too long. Depressingly, McCain's handler/advisors seem to bring out the worst in him, presumably because of their previous experience working for the worst elements of their party.

I see the danger in one party's having a president and a working majority in both houses, and under normal circumstances that might be something to avoid. Not now. These are anything but normal times. The Republican brand is now unintelligible except as caricature.

I hope your assessment of what happened at the convention is correct, and if Republicans can recover some moral authority during an Obama administration, that's a good thing. Nobody needs a congress filled with yes men (except Bush). There is a dialectical process (I'm not much of a Marxist) whereby opinion swings back and forth over time, and Dems are as capable of excess as anyone else.

For all our sakes, lets hope Obama and the Dems don't distort their basic principles as badly as Cheney, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, Atwater, Norquist and others have distorted what I imagine to be yours.

My best friend lives in ABQ. He says the McCain campaign presence is very low, but that he personally has been contacted by the Obama campaign and there is a huge presence on the University of New Mexico campus.

New Mexico was incredibly close in both 2000 and 2004, but I suspect the McCain campaign isn't placing its bets on N.M. this time around. It just seems to be trending too far the other direction.

As for Nevada, these numbers are totally consistent with the sharp spike in Democratic registrations from January to now. If Obama can just close the deal with 90% of Dems and stay somewhat even with McCain among Independents, he takes Nevada.

The Colorado numbers look bang on. I don't see Nader getting anywhere near 7% however. In a few days I think we'll probably see a mild to moderate bounce for Obama in CO and then back down to tied following the Republican convention.

More examples of garbage state polls. The margins in New Mexico and Nevada don't threaten reality.

New Mexico is moving blue. I made note of that in 2006. The exit poll indicated 24% liberal, 32% conservative. That margin, if it holds, is outside swing state range particularly in a Democratic year. Gore and Bush won every state in 2000 and 2004 with at least 24% liberals.

Still, the 13% margin is lunacy. A 13% gap would be along the lines of a 27% liberal, 29% conservative state in a climate like 2008.

Nevada is another matter. I live in Nevada, and have for more than 20 years. The state always reports 34-37% conservative, including 21/36 gap in the 2006 exit poll.

Unfortunately, the cow counties are allowed to vote. Clark County under performs. The state is libertarian in nature and the local Las Vegas political analysts always talk about the "Republican lock" statewide. That's not exaggeration, that phrase shows up all the time.

It doesn't equate to a 5 point Obama lead. The Hispanic numbers in Nevada do not yet apply to the voting booths -- not legal, not registered, or not yet 18.

If Obama leads nationally by 2-3 points, his lead in Nevada is very similar, perhaps one point lower, if I had to estimate.

We may be on opposite ends of the political divide but what unites us as Americans - is the love of our country and our way of life.That is far more than what divides us.

I am an American who is proud to be an American and I do spend too much of my time out of the country working in different countries (running businesses). But, you could not be more wrong in your conclusions.

Whether you are a foreigner in the USA or an American say in Europe, Latin and South America, China or India or Africa or Russia, yes even in most of the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia. Human kind, local ordinary people, can not be more friendly. Respect is met by Respect. Interest is met by Interest.

American ideals and values are respected all over the world, by ordinary people and those in government. Indeed, even by our enemies!

American culture is a powerful influence throughout the world, whether for example, it's our entertainment industries or our IT industries, One of the major opportunities that our entrepreneurs and industrialists have been so slow to grasp are the very alternative energy industries that we so badly need to develop at home to give us self sufficiency in our energy needs, to help with the global environment, to release trillions of dollars into our economy rather than the foreign oil producers' economy. Of course we get a lot of the money back tthrough the supply of sophisticated weapons and their systems.

At Smile High Stadium to-night, we are going to get a message of hope, of change and of strong renewal of the founding principles that our nation was built on.

Sure, there will be some negativity, we are going to get a repudiation of the modern day Carpetbaggers headed by Dick Cheney in Washington. Sure we are going to get a repudiation of G W Bush a President who has been AWOL. Sure we are going to get a repudiation of John McCain who represents the continuation of Bush's economic policy coupled with an even more ham-fisted and mis-conceived foreign policy.

You see the US government have brought our great nation and our much admired ideals into disrepute at home and overseas.

The US Government and the Country's financial systems are on the verge of bankruptcy - having been plundered, by friends (carpetbaggers) of this administration after 9/11, the groups we put in power in Iraq and the cost of maintaining ourselves there.

So it's not just so many ordinary Joes that are suffering but the very financial foundations that underpin freedom, liberty and justice for all and not only here but also abroad.

I personally find it very hard to defend the present Administration and those like John McCain who support it - nothing to do with anything other than something we all agree about as Americans - the erosion of our way of life.

Obama voted to CONTINUE Bush policies when he voted for the Bush/Cheney Energy bill (McCain did not) as well as went back on his word on the FISA bill and voted for it.

I personally find it very hard to defend "those like Barack Obama who support... the erosion of our way of life."

I am not voting for anyone at this time, but I sure as hell am voting AGAINST Obama. He says one thing and then does another. Untrustworthy, inexperienced, risky. And an Obama Presidency combined with a Pelosi House of Representatives and a Reid Senate spells TROUBLE. Same story, different players. It will be as bad or worse than Bush and HIS GOP Congress. NO balanced budget, NO reduction of debt, a foreign policy fiasco waiting to happen.

@thoughtful:
Obama hasn't shown anyone anything. The democrat talking points were already out there before he became known. It was the evil Rove; Lets leave Iraq immediately; Lets talk to our enemies; the rich are making too much money; Lets protect Row vs Wade at all cost; These points are all he talks about. There is nothing new with this man.You read it in all of the papers.They are expecting a lot more. When is he going to bring in new fresh ideas that people have been proclaiming that he has. So far it has been nothing but democrat talking points with a little racism thrown in to keep the faithful riled up. We will see about it tonight. He is going to have to have more than words. He can't hide anymore. Its his party.

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